Relax, It’s Just a Test

Students at Sierra Canyon School in Chatsworth will get a respite from grueling homework assignments in late May. But this won’t be a preview of summer vacation.

Instead, each morning for a week they will take an arduous standardized test called the Comprehensive Testing Program III, the private school equivalent of the Stanford 9.

The scale--and the stakes--of the tests are quite different. Although 11.5 million public school students in California and nine other states take the Stanford 9 achievement test, a mere 260,000 pupils each year sweat through this private school test.

Those private schools that use standardized achievement tests--and some do not--have a number of options, ranging from the Stanford 9 to the Iowa test to customized state exams.

Public school results are published on the Internet and in newspapers and are closely scrutinized by everyone from parents to governors to home buyers scouting for neighborhoods with good schools.

Private schools, meanwhile, tend to keep their test scores private. They have the luxury of using the results as intended: as a snapshot to identify strengths and weaknesses and guide teachers toward needed adjustments.

That isn’t to say that parents of private school students don’t wring their hands at test time. Many do. And when scores come out, some feel compelled to compare notes with other parents and to blab their findings to their children. That goes against the urging of most private school administrators, who advise parents to keep quiet so that students don’t become stressed out and unhealthily competitive.

“It’s probably one of the most difficult issues I wrestle with,” said Ann Gillinger, director of learning at Sierra Canyon, which runs from early kindergarten through eighth grade. “Some parents gain self-esteem based on their kids’ achievement.”

The test used by Sierra Canyon is developed by Educational Testing Service, the same company that devises such college entrance exams as the PSAT and the SAT. It is distributed by Educational Records Bureau, a 72-year-old nonprofit corporation in New York that also helps schools analyze and interpret scores. The company’s acronym, in fact, provides the test’s widely used nickname--”the ERBs.”

The ERBs are geared for college-bound high achievers, most of whom have had every advantage in life.

“It’s a little more rigorous than a nationally normed test,” said Thomas Maguire, president of Educational Records Bureau. “We don’t see it as appropriate for urban or rural schools.”

To say that the ERBs are a little more rigorous is like saying it’s a little colder in January in Anchorage than in Miami. One educator who has experimented with giving the ERBs to Southern California public school students has found that they consider it extremely tough, if not incomprehensible.

Parents at private schools often learn the hard way that not all students look like stellar achievers when their peer group contains the nation’s most privileged students. After all, by definition, half of those who take the ERBs score below the 50th percentile.

Educational Records Bureau can provide schools with several comparisons: against a national norm of test takers from all kinds of schools, against a norm from suburban public schools that use the ERBs and against the independent school norm. The comparisons get increasingly difficult.

For example, Maguire said, a fourth-grader who scores in the 97th percentile on the national norm would score in the 82nd on the suburban norm and in the 76th on the independent school norm.

About 1,300 independent and suburban public schools nationwide and 40 international schools give the ERBs; 90% of the total are private schools. They include Episcopal and Jewish day schools and a small number of Catholic schools. All told, they represent a small percentage of private schools nationwide. (Catholic schools in the Los Angeles Archdiocese administer the Stanford 9.)

Elementary schools that belong to the 170-member California Assn. of Independent Schools are required to administer the ERBs, and many continue to give the test through middle school.

The Stanford 9 and the ERBs measure student achievement in many of the same subject areas: reading comprehension, language arts, math. And the format for both is primarily multiple choice.

But differences abound. For starters, private schools are not required to administer the ERBs at every grade, and many schools test pupils every two or three years. By contrast, in Los Angeles Unified School District, every student in first through 11th grade must take the Stanford 9.

Unlike Educational Records Bureau, the publisher of the Stanford 9 provides schools with booklets for drilling students. Test preparation has surged in California, reflecting the prominence test scores have attained because of state and local efforts to rank schools and make them more accountable for student performance.

Most private schools talk a mellow game when it comes to test taking.

Wildwood School, said parent Betty Goldberg of Santa Monica, “makes a big deal out of not making a big deal out of the test,” she said. “But they’re tests. The kids aren’t stupid.”

Mary Fauvre, director of the elementary grades at Westridge School for Girls in Pasadena, said the school doesn’t “play up the test.” She tells anxious parents about an eighth-grader who scored low on vocabulary but went on to get 1450 (of a possible 1600) on her SATs and be accepted at Dartmouth. The school had urged the girl’s parents not to worry because “her patterns [in the classroom] showed she was doing well,” Fauvre said.

Sierra Canyon is an exception in its willingness to use its test scores--which happen to be quite high--as a selling point. Teachers give students practice bubbling in answers and attempt in everyday lessons to make students familiar with words and phrases routinely used in test questions.

Beyond that, Gillinger said, “we have a rigorous academic curriculum all the time, and that’s the best preparation.”

Testing Students’ Mettle

Taking standardized achievement tests can be a nerve-rattling experience. That needn’t be the case, educators say. Here are some tips for doing well on the Stanford 9, which is given in public and Catholic schools, and the Comprehensive Testing Program III, more commonly known as the ERBs, which is administered in many private schools.

What Students Should Do

* Approach the test confidently and take it calmly.

* Get a good night’s sleep before taking the test.

* Eat a good breakfast. Test-taking requires a surprising amount of energy.

* Wear comfortable clothing.

* Arrive on time and be ready. Come prepared with everything you need, especially glasses, if you wear them.

* Listen carefully to all directions. Read all directions carefully--twice, if necessary.

* Budget your time. Don’t spend all your time on just a few questions.

* Begin work as soon as you are told to do so. Stay with it. Use every second efficiently.

* Do the easy questions first, then go back and answer the harder ones.

* Think. Avoid hurried answers. Guess intelligently by eliminating obviously wrong choices.

* Get all the help you can from “cue” words such as “does not,” “most likely,” “mainly,” “least,” “opinion” and “best.”

* Edit, check and proofread your answers. Keep working until the time is up.

* Try! You are not expected to know the answer to every question. Some of the questions may seem hard, but don’t give up.

What Parents Should Do

* Help your child understand that the tests provide a chance to show what a student knows about a subject and how the teacher can best help the student to learn. The test scores simply give information. They should not be used to reward or punish students.

* See that your child keeps up regular study habits, but don’t ask for extra study time for the tests. The tests cover more schoolwork than can be learned in a few extra hours.

* Reassure your child about the test-taking experience. Students who are calm and sure of themselves do better.

Source: Los Angeles Unified School District

Words, Words, Words . . .

Sierra Canyon, a private school in Chatsworth, encourages teachers to use the vocabulary and terminology of the Comprehensive Testing Program III in their classrooms.

Here are phrases that the school says students must understand to begin to find the correct answers:

* Which best summarizes the story?

* The behavior was . . .

* According to the passage . . .

* What will the author most probably describe next?

* The author would probably advise . . .

* The passage is primarily about . . .

* The story is mostly about . . .

* The passage implies that . . .

* According to the passage, all was done except . . .

* The description was based upon . . .

* The author’s attitude can be best described as . . .

* What is the author comparing?

* It can be inferred that . . .

* What word most precisely fits?

* On which of the following does the author base his contention?

Source: Sierra Canyon School